


sometimes you get tied down

by sapphictomaz



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s06e03 The Children of Gabriel, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, M/M, oh no theres only one bed, super light
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 12:37:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20358637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphictomaz/pseuds/sapphictomaz
Summary: It’s only their second night in Sanctum. It takes Murphy less than ten minutes with Bellamy in a bar to come to some long-awaited realizations.A murphamy rewrite of the Jonathan/Nancy scene in Stranger Things: 2x06. For Sarah.





	sometimes you get tied down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).

> The title is from "Never Thought That This Would Happen" by the Arkells. 
> 
> link to the tweet with a moodboard for this fic - https://twitter.com/sapphictomaz/status/1164749721728012289
> 
> link to my murphamy playlist that i listened to exclusively while writing this - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3h69EmvBlnqPX3vtriWJbr?si=3pQfm8ujQvSZZotN59bzTg

It’s only their second night in Sanctum, and Murphy finds himself back at the bar, drinking alone. He thinks it was better on the ship. Even though he detests space and would never go back, at least he could call it somewhat of a home.

He’d heard that there was some kind of party going on somewhere close by, but he’d opted to spend the night in solitary, mostly to get away from Emori. He feels guilty because he knows that him doing so hurts her, but he knows it's the right decision.

Since Delilah had become Priya - whatever _ that _ meant - her father now acted as the barkeeper in the tavern. Murphy had never met someone who was so honestly, genuinely, and openly _ happy _ before. Despite seemingly losing his daughter less than twenty-four hours ago, his jovial attitude never subsided. “The name’s Jae,” he’d said, earlier, when Murphy had plopped himself down on the bar stool and asked for yet another drink. “I get the feeling I’ll be seeing a lot you around here, huh?”

“Yeah, well,” Murphy had sighed, downing the first shot with no hesitation, “it’ll be great for business.”

Jae had laughed heartily before pouring the next round, joining Murphy in taking a shot of his own. “Fair enough, son.”

It’s a slow night for the bar, most likely because of the raging party happening somewhere on the other side of Sanctum, but every so often the doors creak open and someone enters. Each time, Murphy glances over, partially in satisfaction that he’s no longer alone in drinking his sorrows away, but he knows part of him is caught in a constant yearning for company. 

Echo enters the bar at some point, but aside from a nod his way she doesn’t interact with Murphy, instead settling down in a corner table. He notices the tears that occasionally form in her eyes, that she seems so insistent on wiping away before they can fall, but it’s not his place. He becomes convinced that this night will end in isolation yet again.

Some time later he hears the doors open again, but he’s lost interest at this point and doesn’t sneak a glance over to see what poor sap is wandering into the bar. It’s for this reason that he nearly jumps out of his skin in surprise when Bellamy slides into the seat next to him, wearing that trademark smile that Murphy has come to love and loathe all at once. 

“The party get too boring for you?” Murphy asks, dryly.

“Yeah,” Bellamy says, “something like that.”

“Echo’s here.” Murphy turns around, about to gesture back to where she was sitting, only to find the spot vacant. “Or - she _ was _ here. Looked upset.”

“That...That would be my fault.”

“Oh, really?”

Bellamy sighs, accepting Jae’s offered drink. “Yeah.” He downs the drink in one go, and then the largest smile Murphy’s ever seen erupts on his face as he stares at the glass in wonder. “Oh my god,” he says, “that was the best drink I’ve ever had.”

“Why, thank you,” Jae says. “I guess you didn’t get too much of the good stuff up there on your space ship?”

“No, we most certainly did not,” Bellamy laughs. “Monty would be in awe of this stuff.”

He can’t help but join in smiling at the mention of Monty’s name. “Monty would have loved this. Sanctum, the people, the buildings - everything.”

“To Monty!” Bellamy says, raising a glass. Jae joins in, clinking his glass against Bellamy’s. It’s all a bit cliche for Murphy’s taste, but with an eye-roll he raises his glass as well, hitting it against both of theirs. In sync, the three of them down their shots. 

“I don’t know Sanctum that well yet, but you definitely know your stuff,” Bellamy says. It’s clear that the buzz is already getting to him. It’s this that amuses Murphy the most - the man is almost thirty, and he hasn’t learned how to hold his liquor. 

Jae nods in appreciation, dramatically sliding two more glasses onto the table and topping them up. “That we do,” he says, offering the shots.

“No, no,” Bellamy says, waving a hand at the offered glass, but keeping the smile plastered onto his face. Seeing him look so happy that he could light up the entire bar warmed something deep inside Murphy’s chest. For a moment, he’s transfixed. Bellamy really should smile more. “I’ve got to make sure all our people get..._ home _ , safely for the night. _ I _ have to be able to get to bed tonight.”

Vaguely, Murphy remembers the sleeping quarters he’d been given, and winces a bit when he remembers he was meant to share with Emori. “Yeah,” he agrees, anyways. “Got a full day of negotiating and peace-making to do tomorrow, don’t we?”

“Oh, come on, Murph, we’ve done it before!” 

And there it was again - that smile. “Sure, Bell.”

“The party’s still going on,” Jae says, after a beat of soft silence. “What’s the rush?”

All too soon, Bellamy’s features twisted back into their normal, hardened state. “Our people-”

“Would be _ happy _ to see that you’re having fun,” Jae interrupts, once again pushing the glasses towards them. “I have a spare room upstairs. You’re free to use it.”

Bellamy taps his fingers against the glass, idly. “Well, it is getting late, and I’m definitely not sober.” He turns a pointed glance towards Murphy. “And there is _ no _ way you are. Maybe it’s best we’re not wandering drunk around Sanctum.”

He’ll never admit it, but secretly Murphy’s happy to see that Bellamy cares. “Alright, sure, I’ll stick around.” He turns his gaze to Jae when he asks, somewhat hesitantly, “Is there a couch I could crash on?”

Jae slowly sets the bottle of liquor he’d been holding down on the bar counter. “Okay,” he says, slowly, with knitted eyebrows, “I’m confused.”

Bellamy’s immediately on edge, evidently terrified of ruining things between their people and Sanctum’s. “Hmm?”

“What’s going on here?” Jae leans further on the counter, looking back and forth between the pair. “A lover’s quarrel?”

Instantly, Bellamy chokes on air, letting out an audible sound somewhere between a gasp and a laugh. Murphy somehow keeps his composure, but his eyes widen involuntarily and he lets go of the shot glass he’d been gripping.

“No! No,” Bellamy says as soon as he’s recovered, which, if Murphy’s being honest, stung just a bit. It wasn’t _ that _ ludicrous of a suggestion - was it? Tension fills the air between them. Sensing it, Bellamy backpedals, “I mean - we’re just friends.”

“Yeah,” Murphy says, dryly. “Friends.”

Jae purses his lips, sighing, and then clasps his hands together in front of them. “I have learned a lot today,” he says, “and I have heard a lot of stories about you.”

“Wait, you have?” and “From who?” Bellamy and Murphy both ask in unison.

“And I have heard a lot of shockers today,” Jae continues, “but _ that _ is the first lie.”

Bellamy’s jaw drops. It’s the first time that Murphy’s ever seen it happen, and it would be funny if the situation they were in weren’t so uncomfortable. “It’s not a lie!” Bellamy protests. The way he says it so incredulously seems to be a clear sign that the alcohol has hit. 

“No?” Jae asks, raising an eyebrow. “You’re both young and attractive. You’ve definitely got chemistry, and lots of history.” He lowers his voice, then, even though they were the only two left in the bar. “You’ve even got the real shit - shared trauma.”

Neither of them know what to do at this point besides exchange a shocked glance. In his mind’s eye, Murphy sees the rope that was thrown around his neck, then the one he used to pull Bellamy up and back over the cliff. He sees the moment they landed on the ground for the first time, when he’d taken his first breath of fresh air and looked to his right and decided the Bellamy’s eyes were far more beautiful than anything he’d ever see on Earth. 

Instead of switching his focus from one of them to the other, Jae turns his focus to his right, entirely onto Murphy. There’s nobody on Sanctum less threatening, but instinctively Murphy shrinks back into his seat a little bit, Jae’s gaze putting him on edge. “Trust issues,” he says, “am I right? Something to do with...your dad.”

“What?” Murphy scoffs, “No! I mean - I mean, my dad’s...dead.” He doesn’t know why he’s admitting this out loud to a stranger, or in front of Bellamy, for that matter, but there’s something about this particular situation and the way it’s mixing with the alcohol in his system that’s making him far more open and honest than he’s ever been.

Jae nods, leaning away from Murphy slightly. “Huh. It is a curse to see so clearly. But _ you _,” he says, now leaning towards Bellamy, “you’re harder to read.” There’s a moment of silence that follows, during which Murphy tries to process what was just said to him and implications of it, and Bellamy looks wary of what to come, yet intrigued by what was just said. Like Murphy, he’s edged backwards just a little bit from Jae. 

He can’t help but notice that he’s moved a little bit away from Murphy, too, as if what Jae is implying is too much for him to cope with. 

Finally, it continues. “Probably, like everyone, you’re afraid of what would happen if you accepted yourself for who you really are and retreated back to the safety of - name? Name?” Jae snaps his fingers, gesturing for him to give the answer.

“Echo,” Murphy supplies, a smile hinting at his face. Bellamy shoots him a glare, which makes the whole thing even funnier. 

“Oh. Echo! We like Echo.”

“_ Yes _,” Bellamy says, indignant, giving yet another glare in Murphy’s direction, which he meets with a mere shrug. 

“But we don’t love Echo.”

“What? No, we - I mean, I do!”

Jae gives him a wry smile before stepping back and throwing his hands up in surrender. “And there it is,” he says, “the second lie of the evening.” He gives them a second of silence for them to stew, before taking the glasses back and shelving the bottle. “So, how’d I do?”

He turns back around to face them when he’s met with sputtered objections and a lack of a real response. “My goodness, you two are adorable. Listen. The bar’s closing. There’s a bed in the spare room, and a cot in the closet you can pull up down the hall.” He begins to retreat up the staircase at the back of the bar. “But if I were you?” he calls back, “I’d cut the bullshit and just share the damn bed.”

With that, he’s gone, leaving Murphy and Bellamy alone in the empty bar. It’s been too long of a day, and after all that, Murphy doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do or say to Bellamy. He’s almost thankful - yet, disappointed - when Bellamy clumsily stands and stumbles away from the bar. 

“I’m gonna,” he says, “um - go to sleep. You can have the bed.”

“No, you should have it.”

“No, no, don’t worry,” Bellamy says, almost too quickly, before he gives a quick wave and then he, too, disappears up the staircase. 

Briefly, Murphy wonders why he isn’t as thrown as Bellamy is by what Jae said. He thinks it’s because he’s spent too much time in the prison of introspection that he already knows it all.

* * *

Murphy waits for only ten minutes before following Bellamy up the staircase, seeing the door to the spare room open and the bed made, but empty. The hall is dark and hard to see in, but all the way at the other end Murphy can just make out the outline of a rickety cot. After a moment of hesitation, he quickly enters the room, clicking the door shut behind him. 

He kicks his shoes off because - contrary to popular belief - he’s a nice person, and gingerly sits down the bed, unsure of how to react to it. There’s nothing special about the bed or the room it’s in, per say. Murphy’s pretty sure this is the room Jae uses for patrons who are too drunk to go home, so there’s no special decoration and the bed isn’t all that fancy. Yet, he’s overwhelmed. It’s been a long, long time since he’s slept anywhere this nice. 

Slowly, the noise of the party dies down outside, and he thinks this is the part where he’s supposed to lie down and fall asleep, but Jae’s words cycle through his head on a loop. “Trust issues,” he repeats, aloud, following it with an audible scoff. _ As if _ . He draws his legs onto the bed, closing in on himself. “Trust issues? _ Trust issues _?”

Energy’s coursing through his body at this point, but he can’t tell if it’s just buzz from the alcohol or irritation that he can’t get Jae’s voice out of his head. His legs begin to shake and he shifts on the bed, still uncomfortable. Silence hangs heavy in the air, and it’s getting harder to think about it clearly. 

_ Trust issues _? 

He’s lying to himself, he knows it. That’s not the part of Jae’s speech that’s weighing heavy on him, because he knows himself well enough by now to privately admit that there may be some truth to that sentiment - though, it annoys him that Jae could label him so easily. But no, as indignant as he’ll act about it in public, he can get over that. 

No, it’s the first part that’s keeping him awake. _ Lover’s quarrel _. As if. 

Yet, as he tries to push it out of his mind, he remembers the way Bellamy’s eyes shine in the sun, the way they were so full of confidence and bravado the first time he ever saw them. He remembers the gradual softening of his personality as they both broke down old walls between them, and most of all, he remembers the tender way Bellamy had rushed to his side and held him after Emori had been affected by the red sun toxin, just a day previous. He remembers how gentle his hand had been on his shoulder, the words “I’m sorry,” sounding so sweet when they’d been reunited. 

Murphy wonders if Bellamy is thinking the same. Probably not. He’s probably feeling awkward, uncomfortable about having been suggested to be in a relationship with someone like Murphy. The thought of that makes his skin crawl and he’s standing and walking out of the room before he knows it. 

He doesn’t make it far. As he rounds the corner and begins to head down the hall to where Bellamy’s cot is, Bellamy himself is walking towards him. Through the dark, the two lock eyes and both instantly freeze in their tracks. Still, Murphy can’t help but notice the way Bellamy’s eyes light up, if only for a second, when he sees him. “Hey!” he says, after a beat of awkward silence. 

“Hey,” Murphy responds, quietly, conscious of how late it is. 

“I just, um,” Bellamy begins, sighing and running a hand through his messy hair, “I just wanted to say that-”

And there it is - Murphy’s right. He _ is _ uncomfortable about the insinuation. “No, don’t,” he says, trying to play it off. “I mean - Jae was probably drunk.”

“Wasted,” Bellamy agrees.

“Yeah, I mean, he knows us for a couple of hours and he’s got us all figured out?” Murphy’s overdoing it now, but now that he’s started he can’t stop backpedaling. 

Bellamy nods, shakily, almost too quickly. “Exactly, yeah. Okay, I’m - I’m glad we feel the same way.”

“Yeah,” Murphy says, but his eyes fall down to the floor. “Yeah, it’s fine.” He never could look Bellamy in the eye when he was lying.

Silence descends in the hall. Murphy hesitantly picks his gaze up from the floor and sees Bellamy awkwardly take a step back in the direction he came. As the space between them grows, Murphy realizes he’s been crossing his arms the entire conversation, which is so off-character for him he almost laughs. 

“So - goodnight, I guess,” Bellamy laughs, taking another step. Now conscious of it, Murphy forces his arms down to his sides and nods.

“Yeah, goodnight,” he says, taking too many steps too quickly and almost walking into the doorframe of his room. Bellamy turns back, one last time, and then disappears around the corner. As quickly as he can, with all pretenses dropped, he goes back into his room and shuts the door behind him, pressing his back against it as he closes his eyes and breathes for a few moments. Once Murphy’s sufficiently calmed himself, he collapses back onto the bed in shame.

_ Way to go. You’ve messed it up yet again. _

* * *

It’s been, maybe, twenty minutes of Murphy just tossing and turning before he gives up on sleep entirely, sitting back up in the bed. So, yeah, he’s got trust issues. So maybe there’s something that he’s been wanting to do this entire time, but both his and Bellamy’s trepidation is getting in the way. So what?

_ So what. _ What is he going to do about it? He knows exactly what he _ wants _ to do about it, but how unfair would it be if the feelings are unrequited? Then they’d be in an even worse place than they are now, and Murphy’s not sure if he can cope with that possibility.

But, still - he knows, deep down, that tonight’s the night. 

Slowly, he stands up, leaving the room once again. This time, Bellamy doesn’t meet him in the hallway. He makes the decision right then - if Bellamy’s asleep, he won’t wake him, and he’ll forget this ever happened. But if he’s not, if he’s unable to sleep because he, too, is contesting with a racing mind, then he’ll tell him everything.

He’s only slightly ashamed that, for a small moment, he hopes Bellamy _ is _ sleeping. “Okay,” he whispers to himself, rolling the tension out of his shoulders and gaining confidence before continuing down the hall. 

He doesn’t get far. As soon as he turns the corner, he nearly runs into Bellamy, clearly on his way to see him. 

There’s a lot he could say, right now, as he stares up at Bellamy in the darkness. He could admit all of his feelings. He could make more excuses, deny everything that Jae had said, and allow them to continue to live without the truth ever being exposed. He could say nothing at all, and allow them both to take in the moment. 

But Bellamy’s never looked so beautiful, and Murphy has no impulse control. 

He places a hand at the back of Bellamy’s neck, drawing him down to his height and pulling him in for a kiss. It’s brief, hesitant, but passionate. After a moment, Bellamy pulls away.

“Yeah?” Bellamy whispers. 

“Yeah.”

“Emori?”

Murphy shakes his head slightly. “It’s okay. I think she already knows. Echo?”

“She definitely knows.”

And with that, Murphy grabs Bellamy’s hand and pulls him back down the hall. At the doorway, he turns back around and pulls Bellamy in for yet another kiss, running his hands through his messy hair. Bellamy’s hand is soft and gentle on his cheek. Without hesitation, he pulls Bellamy inside and shuts the door behind them, pressing his back against it and taking in as much of the moment as he can. 

It’s only their second night at Sanctum, but Murphy thinks he’s alright with them making a home here.

**Author's Note:**

> happy birthday sarah! this one's for you. hope you enjoyed it. everybody else, thank you too for reading. come talk to me on twitter @ sapphictomaz.


End file.
